Half a mile away the Colodia swerved and circled, to pass again over the spot where the bomb had been dropped. The boys leaned over the rails to watch for anything in the water that might prove that the submarine had been wrecked. There was not a bit of wreckage; but suddenly Ikey Rosenmeyer shrieked:
“Oil! Oil! Oh, bully! Oil!”
A roar of other voices took up the cry. Great bubbles of oil rose to the surface. The Colodia passed over a regular “slick” of fluid that could mean nothing but that the tanks of the submersible had been ripped open by the explosion of the depth bomb.
Morgan found George Belding standing beside him and looking back at the oil-streaked waves with a very serious visage.
“What’s on your mind?” asked the Seacove lad.
“It seems terrible, doesn’t it, Phil?” said Belding. “All those fellows! Gone like that!” and he snapped his fingers.
“Well,” returned Whistler, “you wanted action, didn’t you? Now I guess you’ve had enough for a while.”
“I believe you,” agreed his friend solemnly.
But the work and life of the boys on the destroyer was not altogether made up of such scenes and incidents as these that have been related. Just at this time the troop ships were coming across from America in great convoys and the Colodia sometimes had less than half a day in port between trips. Four or five hours ashore in the English port, or at Brest where the greater number of ships from America landed their freight and human cargoes, was the utmost freedom that the Navy Boys and their mates secured.
There were extra calls, now and then, like these which have been related herein. When an S O S call is picked up by shore or ship radio, every Naval vessel within reach is sure to make for the point of peril.